Challenges in new Afghan poll, says observer

Last Updated: Tue, 20 Oct 2009 14:01:00 +1100

Huge challenges face Afghanistan as it waits to see whether it will have a fresh presidential election, says an international democracy group.

The country's Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC) has ordered that ballots from 210 polling stations should be discounted because of fraud.

Glen Cowan, head of American election watchdog Democracy International, told Radio Australia's Connect Asia that will result in a million votes for President Hamid Karzai being dismissed, along with votes for a number of other candidates.

Democracy International had observers on the ground in Afghanistan during the August 20 poll.

Quickly

Mr Cowan said it now remained to be seen whether the Independent Electoral Commission, set up by President Karzai, would follow an ECC order to discount a large percentage of votes in its preliminary count.

If new elections are called, they can go ahead reasonably quickly before bad weather sets in for the northern hemisphere winter, Mr Cowan said.

"They have got the ballots printed, and they are available in Afghanistan," he said.

"They have indelible ink (for voter identification) to augment supplies left over from the August 20 election.

"They have new ballot punches . . for voter cards.

"All of those materials could be distributed quickly enough to hold an election in the first week or so of November."

But a big question will be whether the Taliban insurgents can be held back to cause no more disruption than in the last vote.

Caveat

Then, Mr Cowan estimates, fear of violence made kept millions of Afghans away from polling stations.

The "really major caveat", he said, is whether renewed fraud can be prevented in a second vote.

For that to happen, those who were responsible for fraud last time would need to stay out of the new vote, and "they are going to have to be told that by their political leaders".

If those who perpetrated the previous fraud in Afghanistan did not do so again, "you could end up with a legitimate government as a result", the democracy activist said.